Gateways:

About the Department

How do we send messages between one place and another, through some medium of communication? How does the use of different mediums—radio, television, the Internet—affect the way we communicate? How do institutions, such as libraries, maintain and disseminate information over time? These questions, and many others, lie at the heart of the Southwestern Communication Studies Department’s approach.

Through the Department’s multifaceted curriculum, our faculty provides an intimate learning experience, focusing on the myriad ways that communication, culture and identity intersect and define each other. Students learn a variety of methodologies for the qualitative analysis of communication: ethnographic and historical approaches, as well as approaches located in contemporary feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, critical media and cultural studies, and performance studies.

Through this rich combination of modes of thinking and analysis, the Communication Studies Department provides students with a strong critical and theoretical understanding of the ways in which our social reality is constructed and challenged through communication patterns and practices.